


kar'taylir darasuum

by PurpleButtons0203



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adorable Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Bounty Hunters, Canon Typical Genetic Fuckery, Canon-Typical Violence, Desmond Miles is Good With Kids, Dimension Travel, Do not repost, Eagle Vision (Assassin's Creed), Isu Technology (Assassin's Creed), M/M, Mandalorian Culture, Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Snarky Shaun Hastings, Time Travel, do not copy to another site, huh thats a new tag ive never used before lmao, is rebecca upset by how shitty all of star wars tech is?? yes absolutely, looking for a hot single parent in your area?? just find a mandalorian, yodito is an adorable green bean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22943221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleButtons0203/pseuds/PurpleButtons0203
Summary: Desmond doesn’t know what this thing is, but it is wicked cute. It’s like a cross between a furby and a goblin, tiny and green and slightly fuzzy and way more adorable than it has any right to be.It’s also clinging to his leg and cooing.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Desmond Miles, Din Djarin/Desmond Miles, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Desmond Miles
Comments: 173
Kudos: 1140





	1. The First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! First of all you can't get mad at me for not updating anything in a long time because I can't take personal criticism at this very fragile time in my life and second of all this idea only exists fully formed because of my girlfriend and beta, the lovely Vodkassassin!! The only reason I post anything is because she tells me to. Grovel before her.
> 
> Assassin's Creed belongs to Ubisoft, Star Wars and The Mandalorian belong to Disney. Please don't sue me I'm so poor.

Desmond doesn’t know what this thing is, but it is  _ wicked _ cute. It’s like a cross between a furby and a goblin, tiny and green and slightly fuzzy and  _ way _ more adorable than it has any right to be.

It’s also clinging to his leg and cooing.

He looks around, flicking on eagle vision, but everyone is a disinterested gray-white. The- baby? -is bright gold. He flicks off his sight and smiles down at the little thing, bending down.

“Hey there little guy,” he coos, reaching out one finger to poke it gently on one chubby cheek. It giggles and holds out its hands, so he picks it up. It immediately latches onto the hem of his hood with one three-fingered hand, pulling insistently. Definitely a toddler then. “You lost, buddy?”

The little goblin blows a spit bubble at him. Desmond has always liked kids.

“You seem a little young to be away from your parents,” he muses to himself, looking around again while he starts gently bouncing the baby. It giggles again. He can’t keep back the small smile that tugs against his scar. He flips on eagle vision one more time, and this time he sees the small, winding trail of gold across the catwalks of the spaceport. It starts from inside a far hall a few levels up, meandering around the market, until it takes a sharp turn and ends at his feet.  _ Interesting. _

“Well,” he says mostly to himself, “let’s get you back to your family, huh?” He doesn’t bother following the trail exactly, heading straight for the hall instead. The child reaches up and pats his face, rubbing its tiny hand in his scruff. He smiles again and offers his finger instead, letting it grip with surprising strength.

He follows the trail for a while as it meanders through almost the whole station, including through two open stores and an empty house. He merely shifts the child in his grip and climbs above and around them one-handed, letting his eagle vision guide him towards safe handholds and landing spots. Finally, the golden trail leads him out to the very edge of the spaceport, to the starship hangers. His eyebrows raise, but he follows, letting his eyes and feet take him to hanger D-41, to a big silver bird of a ship. Its twin engines rise high in the cavernous space, yellow ochre paint standing out against the burnished silver of it’s hull like the reflection of light off his blade. He doesn’t exactly have many opinions about spaceships beyond if they fulfill their purpose to keep him safe from the terrifying vacuum of space, but this one looks cool. He likes it.

“This is where my eyes say you should be, beansprout,” he says to the child but mostly to himself, “and my eyes don’t lie. But I don’t see anyone who looks like they should be taking care of…” He stops, catching the sheen of  _ bright-gold-important _ , on an armored humanoid at the opposite end of the hangar. They’re pacing back and forth, talking to a robot- no, droid, right, they’re called droids. They’re talking to two droids, each carrying a stun blaster and painted with the insignia of the station’s security detail. They’re practically  _ radiating _ stress. “Well, nevermind I guess.”

He extracts his hand from the child’s grip and brings his fingers to his mouth, letting out an ear splitting whistle. The armored figure stops and whirls around, and the child whimpers, tugging one large ear.

“Sorry beansprout,” he murmurs, bouncing the baby again. He points at the kid and then at the figure, tilting his head in a combo question-invitation. They nod and immediately start striding towards him. They stop a few feet away, oddly tense.

“Can I help you?” the figure asks, in a deep, slightly rough voice.

“Did you lose this little one...sir?” Desmond hedges. The figure nods- a man, apparently. He doesn’t move any closer, which is weird, but whatever. Desmond walks the remaining few feet and plops the child into the man’s arms. He pokes the baby’s cheek one more time, once again unable to help his own fondness for the little goblin. “Bye, beansprout, behave yourself,” he coos, and the baby giggles, pulling a soft smile out of him. It falls away when he looks up and meets the T-shaped visor of the warrior’s helmet. “Keep better track of your kid. Not everyone is as nice as me.”

“Thank you,” the armored man says instead of replying to either of those statements. “How did you know this is where he was supposed to be?”

Desmond just smirks and winks instead of answering, spinning on his heel and throwing a wave over his shoulder. He exits the hangar door, melting into the crowded hallway, feeling his camouflage fall over his shoulders like a warm cloak. He doesn’t look back, rounding the corner and disappearing into the twisting bowels of the port. He re-activates his earpiece, letting sound back in.

“-ou done ignoring me, then?” Shaun chides in his ear. Desmond rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, don’t get your panties in a twist, Hastings,” he mutters, kicking up and over a railing and letting himself slide down one smooth wall until he’s walking on the pipes and vents that line the underbelly of the station. Well, of this level, anyways. “I was helping a lost kid find their parent.”

“Oh, well, if you’re done playing good samaritan, you’ve got a mob boss to kill and then gruesomely decapitate.”

“Don’t forget rob blind,” he sing-songs, grabbing an offshoot of rebar and flipping over his own hands, falling down several stories until he catches a steel cable to break his fall, landing catlike and silent on a droid-only maintenance path.

“On the double if you please, Desmond! The mechanic Rebecca hired is almost done installing the new engine parts. You’ve got an hour at most to kill Thrask and be back here before we have to leave.”   


“Don’t worry, Shaun,” he says, lazily trailing towards the center pillar of the spaceport, “this won’t take more than ten minutes.”

He’s right, of course. The floorplan and designs for this class of starport are public record, no matter how deeply corrupt bureaucrats try to bury them, and Shaun is very good at dealing with bureaucratic backlogs to find the information they’re looking for. Rebecca, that genius, is the best hacker he knows, and she had the information on their target for him within a day of him picking up the job. She’d also done excellent work fucking up the engine of their hired spaceship  _ just enough _ that they’d had to land at the nearest spaceport, where  _ conveniently _ their target had been spotted. Now, as Desmond watches the trandoshan from the edge of the catwalk, he leans his cheek on his fist and waits for the lizard-like alien to be alone in their office. The droids Thrask had been hissing at summarily turn and march off as they are dismissed, leaving the gang leader alone. Alone, that is, but for Desmond.

Just as the dark green reptilian sits down and makes themselves comfortable at their desk, Desmond lets out a strategic cough. The trandoshan whips their head up, eyes narrowing into slits.

“Who-” they start, and then summarily stop, because the tiny dart Desmond fires hits the back of their throat. Then they start choking, because dart, and then they die, because Desmond is very good at mixing efficient poisons, and it doesn’t matter what species he has to use them on.

He flips down onto the main level and whips out the vibroblade he bought at the market earlier for just this occasion. He lifts Thrask’s head and drops it onto the blade, letting the artificial gravity do the work of cutting through the thick scaly skin and separating it from the body. He stands behind Thrask, neatly avoiding the spray of blood that results, and wipes the blade off on the trandoshan’s arm before stowing it in its sheath. He positions the head on the desk, centering it just so, and gently slides the eyes closed, muttering a soft “ _ requiescat in pace _ ” under his breath as he snaps a picture of the whole scene. He sends it off to his temporary employer, and smiles tiredly to himself as the rest of the money from this hit is transferred into his account. Then, he digs through Thrask’s office and pockets, letting his eagle vision guide him towards stashes of credits hidden around the office and some apparently valuable objects that he shoves into his pockets with little consideration to their form or function. Finally, he approaches the data terminal located at the far side of the office.

“Bingo,” he mutters, as he finds the input port and inserts the modified drive Rebecca had handed him. The virus on the small drive does its work, opening and closing several windows as it deletes the security footage of the last ten minutes and then deletes the duplicates, and then deletes the triplicate backup of the duplicates.

He slides the drive back into his pocket, scaling the wall and dodging back into the shadows of the catwalk just in time. The door slides open, admitting the armored man he had met earlier. Desmond raises his eyebrows, surprised, but waits and watches, intrigued. The man stops dead in his tracks and lets out a curse when he sees the dismembered corpse of Thrask. He immediately pulls out a comm.

“Somebody beat me here,” he says lowly, pacing the room. “It’s almost fresh, must have happened while I was getting the kid back.”

_ Not quite, _ Desmond thinks to himself, intrigued. He sits back on his haunches, watching the armored man and committing to this eavesdropping session.

“No, it’d be obvious it wasn’t me,” the man says, arguing with whoever is on the other side of the comm. “Whoever got here decapitated them, left the head sitting on their desk. Not even in the same galaxy as how I operate.” He pauses. “It  _ is  _ nasty, yeah.” Desmond smiles to himself. The armored man sighs, “No, I know. I guess we’re going to have to pick up another job before we can get off this port.” His shoulders droop a little bit, and oh, now Desmond  _ feels bad _ . That just won’t do.

He leans on his arms on the railing, hip cocked slightly out, and waits for the man to notice him. It doesn’t take long, to his credit, now that Desmond isn’t actively trying to hide. His body language immediately stiffens, and he lets out a tight “I’ll call you back,” into the comm before turning it off and stowing it in his pocket.

“Not a fan of my methods, it seems,” he calls down, keeping his body language casual even as the man’s hand twitches for his hip. “You could at least be polite about it and wait until I’m out of the room, you know.” The shadow of his hood hides his eyes, but that doesn’t stop him feeling like the man is trying to stare directly into them.

"It's you,” the man growls, fingers hovering over his blaster. Desmond lets out an admonishing  _ tsk _ and vaults over the railing, landing lightly and soundlessly in a crouch. He stands up with fluid grace, leaning his weight back and crossing his arms in front of him. "Who are you?"

“Nobody important, don’t worry,” Desmond smiles, letting his eagle vision flicker for just a moment. The man is still brilliant gold, but it’s threaded through by tendrils of red and blue. More blue than red, surprisingly, considering how close the man’s hand is to his gun. “Just someone who picked up this same job.”

“What do you want?” he asks, in the same near-hostile tone.

Desmond shakes his head. “Just wanted to give you this, actually.” He reaches into his back pocket, keeping his other hand visible, and tosses the man the bag of credits he had looted from Thrask’s office.

The man looks down at the bag in his hand and then back up at Desmond, several times. Desmond waits, patiently.

“Why?” he asks. Desmond shrugs.

“I’ve already gotten paid for this job, my man, that’s just part of the haul I pulled out of this office.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he says, voice hard once again. His hand, however, stops actively reaching for his blaster.

Desmond shifts on his feet. “Look, normally I wouldn’t do this or feel bad about stealing your kill, but that call you just sent makes you sound like you’re in kind of a tight spot right now. You got a kid to feed man, I know shit’s tough,” he sighs, crossing his arms again. “And before you ask, the answer is no. I don’t have a job for you, I’m not trying to bribe or threaten you, I’m not going to come back later demanding repayment, and I’m not going to take it back. This is no-strings attached, _amico_.”

The man tilts his head. His body language hasn’t shifted at all, but Desmond can tell he’s put this guy on the back foot a little bit. Or a lot. “No-strings-attached money doesn’t exist.”

Desmond just shrugs again, uncaring. “Believe what you want, my man. Doesn’t matter to me.” He deliberately turns away and scales the wall again, landing on the catwalk and starting back towards the maintenance tunnels. “Say ‘hi’ to the beansprout for me, iron man.”

“Wait, please,” he calls. Desmond stops, but doesn’t turn. “I don’t understand.”

Desmond smiles to himself. “That's fine,” he says, disappearing into the dim hallway, “Let's just say I have a soft spot for single dads with cute kids.”

Fifteen minutes later he’s on the other side of the spaceport, settling down next to Shaun as Rebecca slaps credits into the hand of the repair droids and waves them away. She then immediately gets into an argument with the captain of their hired ship, a gruff but not unkind weequay spacer.

“Thrask’s dead then. Anything to report?” Shaun asks, not looking up from his datapad.

“No,” Desmond says, letting himself get comfortable as Rebecca wanders over, still arguing, and shoves a granola bar into his hand, “nothing at all.”


	2. A Chance Connection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all!! I've been writing more than ever these past two weeks or so, so I figured I should get another chapter of this out while i'm still thinking about it! I've been on a massive star wars bender recently, so this was very enjoyable to write. Thank you everyone for the very nice comments on the previous chapter, they may or may have not made me tear up a little bit. Y'all are honestly so sweet.
> 
> On another note, i'm thinking about making a discord server for this fic, or maybe just a conglomeration of all my fics. If that's something y'all're interested in, drop me a line over at my tumblr (purple-sea-dragon.tumblr.com) and let me know!
> 
> Assassin's Creed belongs to Bethesda, Star Wars belongs to Disney. Not my sandbox, just my sandcastle.

Din sees the hooded man four months later, in a firefight on Mygeeto.

Din isn’t in the firefight, actually. Which is crazy, considering how his luck usually runs. He’s trying to sneak himself past the sudden influx of guards in the building that he’s broken into, suddenly way over his head on what was supposed to be a simple retrieval mission. His ship is on nearly the other side of the city, he’s down to two power pack refills, and he’s going out of his mind with worry, and-

And then suddenly, the hooded man is sprinting past his hiding spot, followed by what must be every single guard in the building. The man screeches to a halt at the end of the large hallway turning to face the horde behind him.

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says, in that indefinable mid-rim accent of his. Din has been hearing it on and off in his nightmares for a good while now, haunted by the idea of him. No matter what the stranger had promised on that space station, there was no such thing as free money, and Din had been tense in preparation of the man showing up to call in whatever favor he thinks he’s owed. “You can all just walk away right now.” He flips down his hood, revealing cropped, dark brown hair and moderately tanned skin. That’s all Din can make out from where he is.

“Nice try, thief,” one of the crowd roars, and then they’re upon him. Din watches, conflicted from his place in the small side hallway, except a minute into the fight it becomes clear that the stranger doesn’t need his help at all.

He’s like an interstellar hurricane contained within the body of a human man. The mob crashes over him and in a second six of the gang members are down, and Din can’t even see how it happened. It’s like time slows down around him, as he sidesteps punches and vibroblades and _kriffing blaster fire_ like it’s nothing and turns the horde against itself, letting momentum carry their weapons into each other like some sick game. At one point he picks up a piece of rebar off the ground, deflects a plasma blast with the end, and then shoves the white-hot point through the skulls of two men trying to sneak up behind him (Din is glad his helmet blocks what must be the absolutely revolting smell of burning meat. If he had to smell them dying as well as see it he’d have to take a moment). The man kicks the corpses into an incoming group of assailants and dives back into the fray. He’s clearly used to fighting with improvised weapons, but the moves he pulls out make Din quickly activate the holorecording function in his helmet, transfixed by the grace the man exhibits, the absolute devastation he rains down on those that oppose him. He hasn’t even broken a sweat. He grabs a much larger human by the wrist and flips them effortlessly over his shoulder and into an incoming attack, and Din is going to learn that move if it _kills him_.

It takes Din a minute to realize, but it looks like the man is working with some throwing knives and what looks like a set of wrist blades, an _honest to god sword_ , and _that’s it_ . He doesn’t see the man pull out a blaster from anywhere, he can’t even see a holster on him from where he’s standing. He doesn’t even really need it though, Din reflects, watching as the man gets just close enough to stab two men through the eyes and then flip away from a blaster shot and onto another set of enemies, killed the same way and then he’s off again. It’s like watching a force of nature, the way this man fights. He doesn’t slow down or duck for cover or take a single hesitant step, like he knows every move before it happens and every strike is as effortlessly choreographed as the last. It’s almost like a dance. Din blinks, and then squints and zooms in with his helmet, he didn’t even know you could throw vibroblades like that, what the _hell_ -

The man twists a gang member’s arm and forces them to fire through their own throat, and then the only sound is the sound of the sizzling duracrete and the man’s harsh breaths. Din’s feet move before he makes the conscious decision, steps deliberately audible as he slowly approaches.

Only years of ingrained reflexes save him as he ducks to the side, the vibroblade almost clipping his helmet before it _imbeds itself into the durasteel wall_. The man pauses, arm still extended, before his face lights up in recognition and he relaxes. His eyes are a vibrant gold, Din notes absently, one he’s never seen on another human before. Maybe the man has some non-human ancestry.

“Oh,” he says, a peculiar half smile pulling at the scar on his lips, “hello again.”

“That was impressive,” Din says, because he may not be much for words but even he knows that taking down more than thirty opponents as quickly and effortlessly as that deserves recognition. Also, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and if the man is going to kill him Din can probably keep him talking long enough to figure out some sort of escape plan.

“Thanks. How’s your kid?”

“He’s… fine.” The man turns his back on Din and starts rifling through the pockets of the corpses around him, reclaiming his knives and lifting credit chits with the casual, unaffected air of a man who has done this all before. His hands and forearms are coated in a veritable rainbow of blood. It is nauseating to look at, dripping off his fingers onto the floor as he moves, especially with the way the man doesn’t even seem to notice. Din can’t tell how he feels about it. He’s just so _unassuming_.

“That’s good,” he says, and Din can hear the smile in his voice. He abruptly realizes that he’s still recording, and shuts it down as quickly as he can. “I hope I haven’t managed to accidentally poach your target again, that would be inconvenient.”

No kidding. “I’m here on a retrieval mission, actually.” He pauses, toying with an idea, before reluctantly opening his mouth again. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen the server room on your way through this place?”

“Hmm?” He turns back around, and pauses, head cocked to the side. Din notices for the first time the curved plastoid earpiece the man is wearing. “The server room? No, but gimme a second.” He pulls out a strange, small rectangle from his pocket, like a datapad but much more compact, and messes with the glowing screen for a moment. He looks up briefly and motions Din closer, and well, he goes, because what else is he supposed to do? “Rebecca, could you- yeah thanks,” he mutters to no one, and then he tilts the device up so Din can see, and there’s a small, 3D map of the facility on the screen, one the man manipulates expertly with two fingers.

“This is where we are,” he says, pointing to the small offshoot hallway on the western side of the complex. He pauses, frowning, and then wipes his hand off on his pants, doing his best to clean the blood off his fingers, like he’s just noticed it’s there. He cleans the wet fingerprints off the screen causally, and Din says nothing about it.“The server room is… right here.” He taps the small room, way to the north, nowhere near where Din is currently. Figures. Then he taps another small room, just one corridor away from the server room. “That’s where I’m going. You feel like tagging along with me?”

Din mulls over the idea, and then he accidentally looks into the empty eyes of a fresh corpse, and turns to look back at the man instead, because yikes. “Sure, why not.”

“Great,” the man smiles. “Gimme your comm code, I’ll patch you into the frequency we’re using.”

Din rattles off the numbers, and within a few moments he’s hooked up to two more voices in the clearest comm connection he’s ever used.

“ _You giving your phone number out to strangers now, Desmond?_ ” a voice says, all drawling, core snob accent, and Din can’t help but roll his eyes.

“Shut up, Shaun,” the man- Desmond- laughs, lifting a blaster off of a body and strapping the holster around his thigh. Din doesn’t think Desmond honestly needs it, but he gives the man bonus points for practicality. “Iron man, meet Shaun Hasting and Rebecca Crane, my partners in crime.” He smiles as he says it. Two voices ring out in greeting inside their ears.

“You can call me Din or Mando,” Din says quietly, not sure what possesses him to give three virtual strangers his real name. His gut says he won’t regret it, and if there’s one thing Din trusts, it’s himself.

“Din then,” Desmond says, pulling his hood back up. He turns, striding back towards the entrance of the hallway. He moves like a predator. “Let’s go, if you’re ready.”

Din follows.

**Author's Note:**

> come drop me a line over at @purple-sea-dragon on tumblr!! my inbox is always open y'all
> 
> thanks for reading!!!


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